Word: herculean
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Tonegawa proved that cells accomplish the Herculean task of making antibodies to order by reshuffling parts of the genes that govern the production of antibodies, the cellular building blocks of the immune system. He likens the process to rearranging the boxcars on a freight train. "The dogma was that the order of the genes in any one person is immutable," he says. "The freight train never shifts its cars around." In spite of prevailing theory, Tonegawa found that the "cars" did indeed rearrange themselves in a multitude of different configurations to make the antibodies that fight off diseases. His work...
...although many will arrive much under-prepared for the ultimate intellectual game, there are few who will not have undergone Herculean efforts to create a gameplan for an exam, if not actually going the distance of having handfuls of facts at their fingertips...
...week, as if to give the incoming Federal Reserve chairman, the new U.S. money czar, a few moments to plug in his computer terminal and sharpen his pencils before the first crisis. To a remarkable degree, everything was going Alan Greenspan's way, as the nominee prepared for the Herculean job of succeeding the retiring Paul Volcker. The Dow Jones industrial stock average zoomed to a new peak of 2572.07. The dollar, which had spent much of the past two years in a free fall, seemed to be holding its own. After hearings that Wisconsin Democrat William Proxmire described...
...other times students of other non-English ethnicities have felt torn between the desires for assimiliation and social mobility and the need to identify with their ethnic group. For most, this conflict is predominantly internal. For Black students, the battle is external as well, involving the daily, Herculean labor of confronting a broader university population which in one breath insists that Blacks relinquish their blackness (whatever that means and whatever bit they still have) and in another claims knowledge and understanding of Black values, experiences, and dreams...
...next Herculean labor I had to face was Reservation Hell: 4,500 students were on the town that night, and they had taken all my favorite tables. I was at the point of calling in an order to Bartley's when my date got us a spot at a Japanese restaurant in the Back Bay. After the meal of eel and sumo-sized Chicken McNuggets, it was a mad cab ride back to the Square...